UTC

What is UTC?

Coordinated universal time

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) serves as the global time standard for synchronizing operations across different time zones, critical for maintaining consistency in networked applications and services running on multiple servers worldwide.

As the successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), UTC provides developers with a universal reference point that remains unaffected by daylight saving time adjustments.

How is UTC used?

This standardization is particularly valuable for multiplayer applications and distributed systems that require precise timing coordination across geographic boundaries.

When implementing time-sensitive features like scheduled events, server maintenance windows, or transaction timestamps, UTC offers a reliable foundation that prevents confusion or desynchronization issues. Many development platforms provide built-in functions to convert between local time zones and UTC, enabling applications to display user-friendly local times while maintaining a consistent internal time reference for all system operations and data records.